Topical Interests: Human diet and nutrition and the adaptive significance of human dietary behavior; human adaptability, particularly to stressful environments such as high altitude; Human health and disease, especially within an evolutionary framework (Medical Anthropology); Demography; Life History Theory

Profile

I originally became interested in anthropology
as an undergraduate when I discovered that the discipline would afford me a
unique opportunity to merge my interests in the social and biological sciences.
Hence my approach to anthropological questions is distinctly biocultural – I am
interested in how biology affects culture, how culturally patterned behavior
affects biology, and how these forces interact over time. I make extensive use
of an evolutionary perspective in both my research and teaching, which means
that I consider how biology and behavior can be considered adaptive. I apply
this approach to problems related to health, disease, demography, diet and
nutrition, and human social behavior. I am also interested in the
concept of “biological normalcy”: that is, how normative ideas about
what constitutes a “normal” human biology are related to statistical norms
for biological traits. My work on milk (see below under Diet and
Nutrition) illustrates the ways that these two intersect.
Currently I am working on a biocultural analysis of gluten
intolerance.

Diet and Nutrition:
My current work is on the relationship between milk consumption and child health in the
United States and in India. I am interested in testing widespread claims that
milk enhances child growth, particularly in height. I have also worked on the
relationship between milk consumption and age at menarche, milk consumption and
how it affects children who grow particularly rapidly, and I am more broadly
concerned with the relationship between milk consumption and life history
parameters. That is, milk is designed to facilitate the growth and survival of
juveniles within a particular mammalian species, yet cow's milk is now widely
consumed by individuals of all ages. Thus the question is how this food affects
human biology when consumed after infancy. I am interested in the U.S. and
India because both are major producers of milk and both have cultural and/or
religious traditions that privilege milk, yet the context in which milk is
promoted is very different. It is also the case that there is variation in the
digestive physiology necessary to consume milk after infancy, yet milk is
increasingly consumed in populations with little or no history of milk
consumption. How milk has become a globalized food and how this relates to
population variation in milk digestion capacity is one aspect of this complex
topic. Along with numerous articles and chapters on various aspects of
human milk consumption, I have published two books on the topic:

Reproductive
health: I have conducted long term research on maternal-child health issues,
within the ecological and cultural context of the Tibetan plateau of the high
altitude Himalaya in India. I have been particularly concerned with how both
the ecological challenges inherent to this environment (e.g., hypoxia) as well
as culturally prescribed patterns of behavior affect maternal and infant
health. In addition, I am interested in how very high rates of infant death can
be understood and have implications for emotional development (i.e.,
attachment) and household kinship relations. This work is summarized and
detailed in my book, An
Ecology of High Altitude Infancy: A Biocultural Perspective (Cambridge
University Press, 2004) http://www.cambridge.org/us/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521536820